Conservation by use: the management of the Araucarian forest in the caívas areas in

the Southern BrazilAna Lúcia Hanisch, Gilcimar A. Vogt1, Raquel Negrelle and Ligia Pinotti2

1 EPAGRI – Canoinhas Experimental Station, Santa Catarina State; 2 UFPR - Postgraduate Program in Plant Production – Curitiba, Paraná State; Brazil

Part of forest remnants in Southern Brazil are used as traditional agroforestry systems, denominated caívas. In these areas, the

arboreal canopy maintenance of the Araucarian Forest is combined with the extraction of erva mate (Ilex paraguariensis L.) and

animal husbandry.

These systems have existed for over a century being an cultural,

landscape and historical references for the region. However, the

effect of livestock on forest regeneration is poorly understood.

Figure 2 - Evaluation in regeneration monitoring plots in caívas (every six months, for two years)

The results have confirmed that these systems present high resilience with respect to

biodiversity conservation, despite its use with animal grazing for a long period.

What did we find out? Regardless of the management used in the pasture, the regeneration of the tree species is dynamic,

present and continuous process in the evaluated caívas. There are abundance of native species in regeneration, including many

typical advanced stages species of Araucarian Forest. There were 49 tree species typical of the Araucaria Forest and more than

4000 regenerating individuals / ha, in the average of the two years of evaluation.

Figure 1 Graphic representation of a caíva (Marques,

2014)

What is the potential for maintaining forest biodiversity of caívas, despite the presence of grazing animals almost a century

ago? In order to contribute to a better understanding of the effect of grazing on the regeneration of the Araucaria Forest, it was carried

out an experiment in eight different caívas in the North Plateau region of Santa Catarina State throughout the years 2014 to 2017 .